


the parking lot recurrence

by slybrunette



Category: The Big Bang Theory
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-24
Updated: 2010-03-24
Packaged: 2017-10-09 00:32:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/81091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slybrunette/pseuds/slybrunette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post 3.18 - The Pants Alternative. Penny realizes the error of her ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the parking lot recurrence

Penny realizes the error of her ways while bent in half, searching under the backseat of her car.

There were any number of viable excuses here.

a) She was tipsy.

b) She wasn't awake enough this morning to be considered responsible for her actions.

c) It was _Sheldon_.

She's fairly sure only one out of those three would hold up in court. Not that there would be court. That was only a saying, thank god, because court went so well for them all last time – she's digressing.

All she's saying is that the often-used 'but it's _Sheldon_' excuse is getting to the point where it's a little _too_ often used. Yes, he's a pain in the ass some of the time, maybe more of the time than she'd like, but the bloom has certainly been off the rose with pretty much all of them at this point. Even Leonard.

(Every month or so, when she sees her psychic, she usually leaves the parking lot with a strong need to have his head on a platter. It usually passes somewhere around Euclid Avenue.)

Which is why, Penny has decided, she is going to march herself up there and apologize. Or something. Probably the latter.

Leonard's not home – he's out with Howard and Raj, while Sheldon attempts to deal with his embarrassment from the confines of his room, which is pretty much where he's been since viewing the Youtube video all of twice (multiply that number by, oh, she doesn't know, seven or eight, and you have the number of times that Leonard's seen it), at least to her knowledge – and the door isn't locked, so she just busts in and does her best imitation of the three knock thing that Sheldon's pretty much patented on his bedroom door.

And then she commits what is apparently some kind of cardinal sin by opening it before he's said "come in", at least judging by the perturbed look on his face. He's on his bed with his laptop. She has a sneaking suspicion he's working on hacking into the Youtube account that posted the video (which is probably under some decoy account of Howard's, if we're being completely honest here, and how hard can that password be to figure out).

"Hey, sweetie," the door shuts with a gentle click and she takes a few steps towards him without breaching the barrier of his personal space bubble. Or at least she doesn't think she does, judging by the relative indifference that he's regarding her presence with. She thrusts the catalyst for this conversation towards him. "I found your pants."

He seems confused. Surprise, surprise, he sounds like it too. "But I looked all over this apartment, Penny."

Sheldon takes the pants from her, studies them like he's expecting them to be some inferior ones that she'd bought at the mall that only resembled them at a casual glance. "Yeah, they were in the backseat of my car. Or they were under the backseat of my car." His hands spring back to his chest, much in the same way as they had when he had realized he was massaging her boob. Yeah, okay, so she hasn't cleaned under there in…well, a very long time. Whatever. Fairly uselessly, she adds, "You're probably going to want to wash them."

"Yes." He rises, places them over a hanger on a cleared outside of his closet, next to the jacket, presumably because it's a nice suit, it's an expensive suit, and those two things generally lead to a nice 'dry clean only' label. She watches him with barely contained amusement as he settles back onto his bed with the laptop and his eyes land on her. "Is there something else that you need?"

Oh. This looks like she dropped in to give him his pants. The talking part is supposed to come now. She slides her tongue along her teeth and has a seat on the opposite edge of the bed, a move that he notices with some amount of consternation. While they've gotten past the 'you can't be in my room' barrier, they're still stuck on 'you can't be on/in/near my bed' and maybe there's a good reason for that. And maybe her mind shouldn't even be going there.

She really should've just given him his pants and left.

"So." She folds her hands in her lap. And then wrings them. And then looks at the framed comic-related memorabilia on the wall. Her mouth is dry. And this is ridiculous – she prides herself on her communication and social skills, after all; she should not be hung up on this. "Look, Sheldon, about this morning – "

"For the last time," and, oh, okay, he seems relieved now, which is kind of weird until he continues, "I said your apology was sufficient, and I rarely say things that I don't mean."

"My – what?" She stares at him, blankly, and he blinks back at her, equally blankly. It's not really conducive to her following his train of thought. He huffs a sigh and cranes his neck in an odd little way that she interprets as a gesture. Which is good because that's what it is, and she spots the mug full of tea next to him a second later. "Oh, the mug. You're talking about the mug I broke?"

"What else would I be talking about?" He asks, curiously.

"Nothing." Penny rearranges her legs into a more comfortable position and his eyes follow her every move. She wonders if he's still on the no touching tangent. That's pretty much dead in the water considering how he tried to take a necklace off of her while she was sleeping last week. You want to talk touching and personal and intimate? Try getting that close to her cleavage. For a second time.

Okay. Out with it.

"Except, I just wanted to say that I'm sorry for laughing at you. I know that didn't exactly make your morning and the laugh track probably didn't help with that."

He cocks his head, except this time it isn't a gesture. It's just a tic, like he's considering her. Sheldon folds his own hands and his wrists rest on the mouse pad of the laptop, lighting his hands up a faint, glowing blue. She can see the veins stand out on the inside of his wrists. "I'm confused," he decides.

"O-kay," she draws the word out, that admission being rare enough to warrant follow through. "About?"

"From experience, I've been led to believe that people are usually amused at other's misfortune, as long as said misfortune isn't life-threatening or otherwise dire and has some discernable comedic value." It doesn't even qualify as a retort. It qualifies as a monologue. Or a speech.

Back on topic. "Yeah, okay, that's true," and it is, it really is, and god that sounds mean when she thinks about it like that, "but friends aren't supposed to do that to other friends. It's not…socially acceptable." At least not to their faces, she thinks but does not say. That would bring up a whole other conversation.

"Are you quite sure?"

She leans forward, a laugh escaping, and she makes the mistake of not thinking twice when she goes to rest her hand on his arm. Once again, his eyes are trained on her movements, the spot where her thumb rests right next to a freckle halfway down his forearm. "I don't know if you noticed but I'm kind of an authority on this stuff."

"I have," he replies, automatically. And then reverses his position less than a second later, "but authorities don't make mistakes, Penny. They're supposed to know their field inside and out in order to prevent such things from occurring."

She raises an eyebrow and adopts her 'don't make me go all junior rodeo on you' tone, as opposed to the lighter, sweeter one that she's been using up until this point. "Look," he shrinks back a little, the continuation of that tirade staying on the tip of his tongue for now, "this _authority_ can learn from her mistakes."

There's immediate doubt in his face but he's smart enough not to argue it further.

"And you should rejoin the living, at least outside of this bedroom. I'm sure they'll have forgotten all about it when they get back." They won't. There's not even a chance. But Penny's in the mood for terrifying two of them and withholding sex from the other one in order to get them to.

This is where guilt gets her – just this side of the land of overkill.

She's halfway out the door when he stops her.

"Penny?"

Slowly, she pivots to face him. Maybe the tirade isn't over. "Yes?"

"Leonard's my best friend," he appears to be trying to work something out from the way his eyes aren't meeting hers, "and he has been for seven years. He's certainly shared your general reaction on numerous occasions, but he's never apologized for it."

He sounds confused, a hint of sadness there – like he isn't quite sure if that's the appropriate reaction or not. Penny has to work a little harder to force her smile. "This is just one of those cases where he's not as smart as me." She catches his mouth forming around words, amends, "My kind of smart."

"Fair enough."

She closes the door behind her as she leaves and, in that moment, she's right back to that parking lot and wanting Leonard's head on platter.


End file.
